


You fill my lungs with sweetness.

by ladymdc



Series: Rhack Attack 🥊 [6]
Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: A Hot Beekeeper & His Apiphobic Neighbor, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Beekeeping, Developing Relationship, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fluff, Good Parent Handsome Jack (Borderlands), M/M, Single Parent Handsome Jack (Borderlands), Some Humor, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25550392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladymdc/pseuds/ladymdc
Summary: Some risks were worth taking.
Relationships: Handsome Jack/Rhys (Borderlands)
Series: Rhack Attack 🥊 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1790767
Comments: 37
Kudos: 91





	You fill my lungs with sweetness.

**Author's Note:**

> FOR THE DISCORD! ✨
> 
> A HUGE, MASSIVE thanks to ghost for ~~tolerating~~ fielding the arsenal of questions I had about beekeeping/bees in general. Most of them were probably to sate my own curiosity more than for writing this fic & I think I’m sorry for that. 🙈 (also thanks to key, ivan, lara, & diz for the support & input as I found my footing for this thing. I don't write 'pure fluff' often.)
> 
> And who would I be if I didn't include some form of song inspo/title situation? [Bloom](https://open.spotify.com/track/41yIvlFgvGwxq8qTqAR7eG?si=SCOP2kPHQieSRZAI8pz74w) (The Paper Kites)

Rhys looked out the window disparagingly. 

He had hoped he would be wrong. Jack was a pretty eccentric guy, after all. The three boxes staggered around his yard could have been for anything. Halloween masks. Diamond pony statues. Weapons. Hell, concealed vats of acid for disposing of dead bodies would have been less distressing. 

But no. 

It had been bees.

Jack was out in full nightmare regalia. The activity of the bees was like a continuous wave of motion, like a single living thing undulating on and around the offensively bright shade of yellow of the suit. All that was missing from the scene was some maniacal laughter, and Rhys was pretty sure if he went outside (which he never planned on doing ever again), he would hear it loud and clear. 

Rhys had seen a graph one time. Something about how as hotness increased, so did crazy in exact proportion. 

He understood it now, with startling clarity. 

_______________________________________________________________________________

That not going outside thing didn’t stick for very long because Rhys needed to take the trash out on occasion. Unfortunately, tonight that also meant waiting for the asshole bee hanging out on the lid of his bin to decide it was okay for him to do that. 

Rhys thought about politely asking it to leave. 

Then he thought about squishing it with something. But what if he missed? He was not the most coordinated guy after all, and pissing off a bee seemed like a crap trade-off for ridding himself of a bag of garbage. Or, heaven forbid, what if he actually succeeded and its friends heard The Murder take place and came to avenge him? 

So, Rhys was about to do the only logical thing: flip the lid open, panic yeet the trash in, and hope for the best as he ran off— when Jack scared the absolute  _ shit _ out of him just by opening his mouth. Rhys actually jumped at the sound of his voice. Then, he cursed and flinched back as the bee floated around a little bit, i.e., properly menaced, before returning to its apparent forever home on his trash can. 

Jack raised his eyebrows. “Wow. Okay. That was not the reaction I was going for. You alright there, Rhys?”

“No, I’m not,” he snapped in embarrassment. “One of your goddamn bees is on my bin, and I’ve been standing here forever waiting for it to leave.”

Jack frowned, then stepped forward to take care of the problem. Literally. He slipped off his flip-flop and whacked it. The bee anticlimactically flopped off of the lid and landed on its back in front of Rhys. One of its legs twitched a few times. 

Gross. 

Rhys felt a little queasy. There were bugs, and then there were bug—  _ corpses.  _ Not to mention, he sort of felt bad. It technically didn’t do anything to him, and it was like… one of Jack’s pets or something. Rhys looked up to find his mismatched eyes, blue and green and vibrant, studying him intently, and after a beat, Rhys had to avert his gaze. 

He never knew what to make of Jack with his perfectly styled hair that somehow also looked finger-fucked and his delightfully broad shoulders. Or, how to process that Jack had to look up at Rhys just a  _ teeny tiny bit _ and seemed to enjoy that. His voice didn’t help anything, either. It was low and smooth and felt like a tangible thing when Jack spoke to him. Which occurred in very unpredictable stints since he had moved next door several months ago. 

Jack alternated wildly between aggressively hitting on him (or perhaps he just liked to watch Rhys squirm) and ignoring him altogether. But the guy was a single parent. Ill-advised crush or not, Rhys tried to leave him alone and be forgiving of his idiosyncrasies because of that. Including the bee thing.

“You didn’t have to kill it.”

“No, I didn’t,” Jack replied, and Rhys blinked at the warm fingers that brushed over his. He let go of the trash bag and watched, bewildered, as Jack moved to toss it into the bin for him. “But even if that one was my favorite emotional support bee, it was bothering you.”

Rhys reluctantly felt himself start to smile. “What was its name?”

“Jeff.” 

“I think I’m disappointed,” Rhys told him, and they shared a smile. Jack dusted off his hands. 

“So, bees freak you out? Why’s that?”

Rhys shrugged because he could not satisfactorily answer the question. They just did. They buzzed. They flew around erratically. They scared him. The end.

“Are you allergic?” Jack asked.

Rhys examined his expression for a moment. He was serious, attentive. Maybe even a little concerned. 

“I’m not,” he assured. “I can’t say that I have a good reason for it. They just do.”

“I want you to come over then,” Jack said. “I can show you there’s nothing to be afraid of, and we’ll call it a date.”

His heart did a little flip. Despite the less than ideal circumstances, Rhys was tempted. Really tempted. And his hesitation only seemed to encourage Jack. He took a step closer, smirking with something that looked an awful lot like triumph in his eyes.

“We can even do dinner and a movie if you want, but food-wise, it’ll have to be pancakes because—” 

“Daaaaaaddy?!”

Jack’s smile turned wry. “Well, because of that.”

At three, Angel was bright and unstoppable. Unlike Jack, she was pale with fine, black hair, but her incredible blue eyes were the exact same shade as his right one. She came barreling off of their front porch barefoot in a black and yellow striped dress, wings, and what appeared to be a little black bandit mask. 

“Did the tall people say yes for pancakes and—” 

“Shhh, Jeff,” Jack said, putting his hand over her entire face as she came up next to him. He didn’t look irritated. He looked— awkward. “No one asked you for your help.”

Angel let out a string of giggles and shoved his hand away. Then, she pushed the mask up off of her eyes. It scrunched her hair up all crazy-like around her head. 

“It’s just me, daddy!”

“Oh! Honeybee, I didn’t realize. My bad,” he said, smiling warmly. “And ‘the tall people’ has a name, remember?”

She frowned thoughtfully. 

“Either way,” Rhys said, coming to her rescue. “‘The tall people’ said yes to pancakes.” Because how the fuck could he say no? Not only to her but to _ Jack.  _

At his reply, the smile that shot across Angel’s face was beaming, and Jack’s shoulders relaxed as it became clear that Rhys was not put-off by his single-parent status. He couldn’t help the spread of warmth that moved through him at that. It had to be incredibly difficult to allow the familiar and unfamiliar to merge, and yet there Jack was, doing his damnedest despite that. 

“I’m going to show Rhys our bee friends first, alright, pumpkin?”

_ Oh right, the bees, _ Rhys thought, trying hard not to be unnerved.

“I’ll get my hat!”

“That’s a good idea, but can you tell me if that guy down there is one of our Jeffs before you run off?” Jack asked, pointing toward The Murder Victim. 

Angel squatted down and, after a moment, said: “Not a Jeff. A wasp! They are mean as fuck.” 

She declared it with such certainty that Rhys had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. Jack placed his hands over his face for several seconds as though trying to compose himself. Then he dragged them away to give Rhys a self-deprecating smile.

“Good job, princess,” he said. “Go find your hat.”

She pulled the mask off her head and handed it to Jack before running off. He sighed and ruffled his fingers through his hair. It was the most overt gesture of discomfort Rhys had ever seen from him.

“My friend does that too when his daughter repeats stuff she shouldn’t. Just ignores it,” Rhys clarified. It didn’t make sense to him at first, but not drawing attention to it had made it stop on its own. “Seemed to be the most effective approach.”

“Usually,” Jack said, appearing to unwind again. “That one is sticking around though. She likes to tell her friends at school every damn time she sees one.” 

Rhys chuckled. “It’s a useful fact, at least.” 

“Silver lining,” Jack allowed drolly. 

“So,” Rhys began, somewhat awkwardly. “Not a Jeff?”

“Not a Jeff,” Jack agreed, smiling again. But then it faded, and Jack leveled him with a speculative look that made Rhys feel like he was being dissected. “I’d show you how to tell the difference, but I don’t want to squick you out, so you sure you’re up for this? All of it?” 

“One part definitely more than the other, but yeah, assuming you’re not going to just shove me into the middle of them, I think I’ll be fine.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Jack said, shifting closer. His gaze once more filled with intent. “And I’ll make it worth the effort.” 

Rhys had assumed dinner and a movie would fulfill that, so he found himself raising a brow and asking: “How do you plan on doing that?”

“Have you ever tasted raw honeycomb?” Jack asked in a low-pitched tone that trickled down Rhys’ spine. It felt like Jack was asking him something of a completely different nature. Rhys had to take a moment to process the words themselves. 

He swallowed. He couldn’t stop looking at Jack’s mouth. 

“No, I can’t say that I have,” Rhys replied absently.

Jack’s lips curled lazily. “Alright, kitten. Then let’s go fix that.”

He followed Jack next door with three things drifting through his mind. The first— that Rhys lagged a step or two behind to be respectful, and despite trying valiantly to not stare at Jack’s ass the entire time, he was failing horribly. The second— once inside, Rhys found a certain organized chaos, lived-in clutter feel he had come to expect from people he knew with children. And lastly— Jack had called him kitten. 

Rhys was quite sure it had not been his imagination, and he was also quite sure that he had liked it. 

At the back of the house was a large sunroom. Angel was playing with sidewalk chalk just outside of the back door, and her little netted hat and wings were on the ground nearby. Jack gave her a careful glance, then gestured toward the machinery at one end of the room and explained that it was for extracting honey. The set up looked like what Rhys imagined a mad scientist’s lab would. He decided that was fitting. Then Jack pulled out some protective gear from a nearby closet: a netted hat of his own and some elbow-length gloves.

“This is it?”

Jack grinned. “This is it,” he said. “You’re not going to get that close, and I wouldn’t stick you in one of the spacesuits unless they were grouchy or we were harvesting or having some fun with them. They get in the way.”

“Fun?” Rhys asked, eyeing the ‘spacesuit’ longingly as he worked his hand into the thick glove. 

“Yeah, you suit up, cage up the queen, and let them cluster all over you. You know, fun,” Jack said, settling the hat on Rhys’ head and adjusting the veil. He felt absolutely ridiculous and  _ really _ keyed up all of a sudden, and it made him want to be difficult. 

“I think you and I have very different definitions of the word ‘fun,’” Rhys muttered.

“Aw, don’t be like that.” Jack settled his hands on Rhys’ hips, and he loosely held onto Jack’s arms, just above the elbow, almost reactively in return. “Bees are generally not aggressive. They really do not want to sting us. They die when they do. And who wants to fucking die for no reason? The only time a bee will sting is if they feel like their hive is being threatened or if you accidentally hurt them. Alright?”

With the facts laid out plainly like that, Rhys’ fear did not make any sense. Still, it was not something that could be rationalized away as much as he would like that. Either way, Rhys appreciated what Jack was trying to do. 

“Alright,” he replied.

“Don’t focus on what freaks you out,” Jack said, his thumbs tracing little circles on Rhys’ waist. “Focus on something else. Do you think you can do that for me?”

He could feel the heat radiating from Jack’s hands, but also creeping across his cheeks as Rhys kept meeting his piercing gaze and knew he could do that easily enough. 

“I think I can manage that.”

“That’s good,” Jack murmured, running his hands up Rhys’ sides. Then he glanced out the window toward Angel before stepping away. 

Outdoors, Rhys did not know how to describe the sight or the smell or the sound, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to. Jack’s hand was a warm, grounding weight against the small of his back, and Rhys felt its loss keenly when he left him a conscientious distance away from the hives. He held his breath as Jack and Angel stepped into the writhing cloud. The bees seemed to part around them. A few settled on their arms, walking across their skin like they were an expected part of the landscape. Jack opened the top of the nearest box, lifting out a square frame that looked nearly filled with a whitish-yellow wax. 

Throughout all of this, Jack delivered a plethora of Bee Facts™. Rhys did his best to listen attentively— to focus on Jack, on ‘something else,’ besides the bees in the air and the fact a three-year-old girl had a stronger spine than Rhys did.

There was Queen Beeatrice I, II, and III, and all of the drones (male) and workers (female) were named Jeff, courtesy of Angel. Two out of three hives were fully functional, as the third was just recently installed. There were about 10,000 bees in a ‘package,’ which could be literally  _ mailed _ through the post— horrifying, truly— if there wasn’t someplace nearby to pick one up. The great news was when the weather turned cold, they would not be able to fly around outside, so Rhys could enjoy his pool without worry in the form of an ice rink.

Once Jack had cut out a small bit of honeycomb and passed it off to Angel, Rhys couldn’t help smiling as Jack practically patted at the bees with a sort of annoyed exasperation. Urging them out of the way so he could settle the frame and close the box.

On his way over, Jack dusted off the few bees hanging out on him before draping an arm over Rhys’ shoulders.

“See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Rhys smiled and wrapped an arm around his waist. “You know, I thought you must be crazy to do this, but you’re really just kind of a nerd.” 

“Shut up. I— oh, Angel, honey, no.” 

She froze, looking alarmed, but the entire chunk of raw honeycomb was already stuffed into her mouth. Jack sighed. 

“Never mind. It’s fine,” he said. “Just wash up when you’re done, okay, sweetie?”

She nodded and ran off toward the house, dragging her little bee hat behind her. 

“Next time,” Rhys said, fingers tightening on his ribs, and Jack smiled. It was loose and crooked and made Rhys’ heart do this little stutter thing.

They left the protective gear in the sunroom and headed back inside. It was interesting, in a sense, how easily Rhys slotted into their evening routine. He and Jack were not strangers by any means, and perhaps it was only because Rhys was used to being around little kids and family units at this point in his life, but it felt right. It felt natural. 

It took Jack a little bit to relax into the situation again, to stop apologizing or trying to deflect Angel’s attention elsewhere. Rhys was happy enough to amuse her while Jack cooked. It wasn’t like pancakes took very long to whip together, and coloring still allowed them to all chat. Plus, having her around to insist they have honey instead of syrup with their pancakes was so worth it. Not just for the flavor, but to have her proudly show off Jack’s self-portrait on the packaging of his honey from their previous hives. 

Jack was considerably less amused. By that, and by Rhys’ insistence that if he was going to stick around, the least he could do was clean up the dishes while Jack got Angel ready for bed. Which was a good call. Apparently, she refused to nap at home and regularly crashed at around 6PM, approximately fifteen minutes into her movie of choice— _Big Hero 6._

Once Jack had carried her upstairs and tucked her in, he stood in the middle of the living room, arms crossed. “You know, I’d been chewing on asking you out for a while, and this isn’t at all how I had envisioned it going,” he said, looking away. “I try to keep Angel in the know and stuff, but sometimes she hears something and just latches onto it, so—” 

“It’s fine, Jack,” Rhys said, standing. “Tonight was great.” He gently tugged on the placket of Jack’s open outer layer, forcing him to uncross his arms, and kissed him. There was a split-second pause before it seemed to register, and then Jack deepened the kiss.

Jack kissed him slowly, drawing out every movement, seeming to savor each brush of Rhys’ tongue. It went on like that until Rhys couldn’t form thoughts or consider much else beyond the wonderful warmth of it. But eventually, Jack pulled back. 

“Next time,” Jack said, his eyes trailing over Rhys’ features.

“Next time,” he agreed, and they settled in close. The movie ran in the background as they chatted, hands against skin, lips brushing softly on occasion, and their lust left unattended and fading away. 

Rhys was grateful a bastard wasp had chosen to set up shop on his trash can for fifteen minutes, and he was grateful Jack had decided some risks were worth taking.

**Author's Note:**

>  **update 12.03.20** : there is [a sequel](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27840757) to this now if you seek more bee-related Rhack fluff.
> 
> as always, thanks for reading ♥️


End file.
